OK, WTF, this got me so annoyed that I had to get out of blog posting dormancy. I just went to Ke-Sen Huang’s brilliant page of conference papers on the web. Except, this time, all ACM pages (such as SIGGRAPH 2009, I3D 2009, etc) have been taken down, with the comment “This page has been removed at the request of the ACM Publications Board.”

What the fuck!?

ACM has no rights to request require(*) someone to remove links to pages on the net, and it’s unfortunate that their request was complied with.

According to this page the ACM Publications Board is run by the following nasty little censoring asses:

I strongly urge you to email them, with a cc to the ACM president Wendy Hall (wh@ecs.soton.ac.uk), to tell them what you really feel about ACM practicing censorship on Ke-Sen Huang’s pages (or anywhere)!

And if you have anything to do with ACM and SIGGRAPH, as people in the games industry tend to do, then I implore you to immediately stop your involvement and furthermore that you boycott their conferences (SIGGRAPH in particular) until they straighten their shit out.

Do not let their censoring of free information stand!

(*) Changed the wording here, because some dip-shit on Reddit can’t understand the message otherwise.

As you are aware, the computer graphics community has expressed dismay and concern about the removal of your web pages. ACM wants to make it possible for you to continue this service that the community clearly values very highly. By this message ACM grants permission for you to repost the pages, with the addition of links to the authoritative versions of the papers in the ACM Digital Library. The author's home page links may also be included, but should not be links directly to the author's version of the paper. Please post on the site that the information is being provided with the permission of the ACM. This is the solution you proposed earlier, and it is clear from the community's comments that it is the right thing to do.

As you know, the concern about your pages was ACM copyright policy with regard to links. As a result of the community discussion, ACM will institute a formal review of this portion of its copyright policy.

Please contact us with any concerns or questions.

Sincerely,

Patricia Ryan
ACM Chief Operating Officer

They are still implying Ke-Sen’s pages were infringing on ACM copyright, which is still a legally suspect claim as (1) Ke-Sen’s pages are first and foremost factual listings which are not subjected to copyright infringements, (2) as Ke-Sen’s pages were sufficiently different from ACM’s so as not to be a derivative copy, and (3) even if they were outright copies of ACM’s table of contents, “fair use” of TOCs have apparently not been tested in a court of law, so ACM has no legal leg to stand on in this issue (and in fact, a ruling against all libraries in the US seems logistically implausible):

It will be interesting to see how this truly plays out over the next several weeks, but it seems a battle has been won, though the war is likely to continue for quite some time.

Thanks to everyone who read my post and voiced your concern to the ACM Publication Board. An organization is its members, and there is no stronger means of controlling an organization than through the vote of your voice and your purse!

My impression is that SIGGRAPH management is taking SIGGRAPH in a direction where none of the members want to go. It is also a direction opposite of the rest of science and academia – and common sense. What is the motivation?!

This is the answer I got. I do actually understand their reasons, in a way they have always been very liberal, but I do think they don’t understand who they should be making money with. It’s not that my company, my university etc are going to not subscribe to ACM and buy siggraph DVDs because of the work of Ke-Sen Huang…

—

[Christer: Sorry kenpex, I’m not interested in having Holly Rushmeier’s bullshit statement posted on my blog. Her statement is morally corrupt, legally suspect, and totally ignorant of the realities of the flow of information on the internet today. It has been removed.]

[…] and it now seems that ACM is trying to steal some of that spotlight. The ACM publications board has decided to shut down some of the most useful resources available on the web for indexing recent conference papers, such […]

[…] to copyright (the ACM exists to support the computing community, not to make money, and they seem to have forgotten that). I’ve just written a blog post about their latest bit of asshattery – they are trying to […]